


Haunted

by AngelQueen



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark fic, Future Fic, Het, Multi, Slash, episode-related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-09
Updated: 2011-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 19:43:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelQueen/pseuds/AngelQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How could they have gone from those days, to this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to and including 2x12 _The Fires of Idirsholas_.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** _Merlin_ is the property of the BBC and Shine. I make no claim on it and write this purely for entertainment purposes.

Her green eyes haunted his dreams, filled with tears and lined with shadows. Those eyes which had so often sparkled with laughter, had been filled with bewilderment. She had not understood why he had done such a thing. It had hurt, perhaps more so than anything else he had ever felt.

She had been his friend, standing up for him even when Arthur did not. She had been the first to come to offer him assistance in defending Ealdor, before even Gwen.

How could they have gone from those days, to this? How, from friendship to betrayal and poison?

He had held her in his arms, felt her life slip from her body, and had felt something of himself fall away with her. She was gone even before Morgause had stormed in and torn her away, and a part of him almost wished the sorceress _had_ killed him.

When he saw her again, her eyes were black and cold, contrasting with the fire and death that she flung at anyone who came near her, pausing only when he himself approached. Her mouth curled into a sneer.

“Did you think I’d forgive? Did you think I wouldn’t claw my way back just to see you pay, Merlin? To see you _suffer_?”

He did not reply, only defended himself from her subsequent magical barrage.

It wasn’t her, he kept telling himself. The vicious, violent creature that attacked him, Arthur, and even Gwen was nothing like her. It wasn’t her. It _couldn’t_ be.

Nonetheless, that conviction did not stop the little voice inside him from whispering, _How can she forgive when you cannot forgive yourself?_ Even as he told himself that it was not her, doubt still lingered in the back of his mind like a disease for which there was no cure.

She was the greatest regret of his life, above even sparing the little boy she’d loved so much, the boy who would one day take Arthur from him. He’d destroyed her, and it was his greatest shame, his greatest sin, the one he would never find absolution for. Perhaps it was justice to see her unite with Mordred, just as foretold, and to watch them together lay waste to all he and Arthur had struggled to build. Perhaps it was Morgause’s revenge, to see the shell of the _greatest_ woman he’d ever known become the most _reviled_ woman in history.


End file.
